Why Democracy Is Not the Answer

Whenever I hear about a “liberal-conservative standoff,” I feel the impulse, conciliatory soul that I am, to volunteer my services. Jay P. Dolan, in the Robert Cardinal Bellarmine Lecture at St. Louis University, says that such a standoff is what we have the minute the conversation turns to lay participation in the government of the Church. Dolan, emeritus at Notre Dame, is the author of The American Catholic Experience, a big and instructive textbook that is, I am told, still widely used in college courses. The gist of the book is that the American Catholic experience is, all in all, a great success because now Catholics are more or less like everybody else.

In his Bellarmine Lecture, “In Search of an American Catholicism,” Dolan sharply criticizes John Paul II because, inter alia, “he sought to silence those who support a more open and tolerant Catholicism that is at home in the modern world.” The loss of Catholic distinctiveness and being at home in a modern world that has lost its way are not my idea of goals to be desired or achievements to be celebrated. It appears that Prof. Dolan and I have serious disagreements.

But I want to be helpful in getting beyond the above-mentioned standoff, and so will touch on points of agreement. I expect he is right in saying that the system of “trusteeism” that prevailed in the nineteenth century for some thirty years has gotten a bum rap in the telling of Catholic history. In that system, laymen incorporated parishes, handled most of the business affairs, and in some cases chose and paid the pastors. Dolan blames foreign-born bishops who were ignorant of, or actively hostile toward, the American democratic ethos for squelching trusteeism and imposing a European model of “monarchical” episcopal rule over an utterly subservient laity. And it is true that to this day many pastors and bishops seem to live in fear of a revival of trusteeism, with the result that they expend their energies on micro-management, doing many things that lay people could do as well or better, and only grudgingly entertaining the counsel of the non-ordained. This compulsive need for control is an aspect of the deadening disease that is clericalism, which is widespread in the Church in America.

A workable division of labor has been a problem in the Church for a very long time. We are told in Acts that the apostles, in order to be freed from “waiting on tables” and able to give their full attention to the ministry of the Word, appointed deacons. The next thing we know, the deacon Stephen is preaching the Word and, as a consequence, getting himself martyred. We are not told whether he ever got around to waiting on tables. Bishops are ordained to “teach, sanctify, and govern” but many will admit that their day-by-day schedule leaves little doubt that the first two take a back seat to the third. Especially the first. The same is true of many pastors of parishes.

Dolan tells of a Bishop George Conroy who in 1878 was sent by the Holy See to evaluate the state of the Church in America. Conroy reported that many of the bishops were more “bankers than pastors,” that they had little respect for the rights of the clergy, and were frequently chosen by a secretive process in which personal friendships counted more than qualifications for the office. Conroy’s criticisms strike a contemporary chord. In Conroy’s judgment, only ten of the sixty-eight bishops in the United States at that time were distinguished. “The rest,” Dolan writes, “were mediocre, and, he believed, as far as theological understanding was concerned they were even less than mediocre.”

Ten out of the sixty-eight is 15 percent. There are currently 194 bishops who are heads of dioceses, and it might be asked whether we have even that 15 percent now. Can one name twenty-nine distinguished American bishops serving today? One respectfully suggests that this is the kind of question that answers itself. Of course, we can quibble about the meaning of “distinguished.” One possible measure is whether, if they were not bishops, they would by virtue of their talents, character (as in “holiness”), and intellectual or pastoral achievements be considered men of distinction.

So Dolan raises interesting questions. “Because of this affection for democracy,” he writes, “people today expect more consultation and collaboration when it comes to the government of the Church at both the parish and diocesan levels.” Consultation and collaboration to be sure. But then he and groups that he supports, such as Voice of the Faithful, make the confusing claim that the Church should be democratic. Apparently Dolan thinks it a good thing that for Americans “the voice of the people became the voice of God.” He says the Church needs “more democracy,” but the question is not more or less democracy, the question is democracy itself.

Democracy means that sovereignty resides in the demos, while in the Church sovereignty belongs to Christ and is exercised through his apostolic ordering of his body, the Church. Consultation, collaboration, participation, Yes. Democracy, No. Dolan acknowledges that “the Catholic creed is not subject to a popular vote” but he seems not to appreciate that the apostolic order of the Church is an essential part of the Catholic creed. America’s democratic culture does produce the expectation that leaders be persuasively engaged with those whom they would lead. Effective leaders know that and welcome that. For the laity to be unquestioningly subservient to their bishops may have personal spiritual benefits for the laity, but it is very bad for bishops, spiritually and otherwise. Command and control is not the model of leadership enjoined by the Church’s Lord.

If we are to move beyond the clericalist habits of episcopal arrogance and the standoff between liberals and conservatives, both of which Dolan laments, it must be agreed that—after all the consultation, collaboration, debate, and discussion—it is the bishop who is finally responsible, iure divino, for the government of the local church. Even the more distinguished of bishops will cling to autocratic ways as long as Prof. Dolan and those of like mind insist that the only alternative is “democracy.”